Craig Bellamy may quit at end of season if Cardiff City avoid relegation

The Telegraph | Mar 1

Craig Bellamy is planning to execute a great escape at Cardiff City before possibly bringing down the curtain on a spectacular and often controversial playing career.

The 34-year-old Welshman is poised to return to Cardiff’s starting line up at Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday having been banned for the previous three games following an off-the-ball swipe at Jonathan de Guzman in last month’s South Wales derby.

But the much-travelled striker suggested on Friday that, come the end of the season, enough might just be enough.

On the day billionaire owner Vincent Tan again hit the headlines for his latest outburst, Bellamy said nothing would give him greater pleasure than to bow out of the game on the back of Cardiff retaining their Premier League status. If they achieve that, you get the feeling the Cardiff-born striker will hang up his boots.

Bellamy is determined to give it his best shot in the remaining 11 games of the season – five of which manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer believes they need to win.

“I feel sharp and quick,” said Bellamy, whose season has been blighted by niggling injuries and a subsequent lack of fitness. “I actually feel that I have got a very good chance of deciding games now, whereas I didn’t feel like that at the start of the season.

“Who knows where my career goes at the end of the season. But if it is to finish, what a nice way to go out by keeping this club in the Premier League. It would just be a great achievement, like promotion was last year. I would love to leave the club in a healthy state.”

Healthy is not the word many of the Cardiff supporters would use following the sacking of former manager Malky Mackay and the recent demise which has brought only one league win in the last 11 games.